Post Boom--But No Gloom and Other Signs of the Times

Well things at CDS are definitely in a post-boom mode now. First the downside: a training course I very badly need to go on was cancelled this morning due to low registration. Our budgets for the coming fiscal year have been slashed quite dramatically with training and travel dollars being the major casualties. No surprises there.

We are still in a hiring freeze but hiring temp and contract help only (at great expense no doubt). However, very few involuntary terminations are happening unless you are in severe need of weeding out. (We had 3 of those cases recently and they were totally foreseeable.)

The upside, yes there is one and that is there is a project for which I am in the process of writing a proposal and until now the typical response is to get an outside contractor todo it. For once, this company is seeing the advantage of using an inhouse resource todo the job--namely me! (The trouble is I could really have used that course, but then there's nothing like on the job training!)

However the documentation unit is suffering as one the writers upped and quit without talking to anybody about it at all and the manager is having a heck of a time trying to get her boss to allow her to get a replacement in any shape or form. All he did was leave his letter of resignation on the manager's desk and dropped off his pass at the front desk and out he walked.(He did this early in the morning when nobody would see him.) No explanations nothing. So Dina, at least Silanis knows what the issues are. Whether they decide to act on them, well, that is likely to take some time. In our case, this individual didn't have the mojo to speak up and give us a chance to find out what was wrong and if there could have been something we as a company could have done.

The moral of the story, I guess painful and all as it is, I think despite all conventional wisdom out there these days not to show any loyalty of any kind to a company, I think you are doing a disservice by not telling them what they are doing wrong. How you go about it naturally will colour the result, but at least both parties stand a chance to benefit and learn from the experience as long as an attempt is made at constructive dialogue.